


No Gods, No Sinners (Only Us)

by cryogenia



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Purring Trolls (Homestuck), alternate timeline - premurderstuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-07
Updated: 2017-02-07
Packaged: 2018-09-22 15:06:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9613124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cryogenia/pseuds/cryogenia
Summary: When he was younger (and the world still existed), Karkat used to read lots of high-low pale romance. He liked to picture himself as a daring lowblood hero, the one troll who could soothe their beautiful, terrifying moirail.He never thought it would be like this.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SlaveToMyKeyboard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SlaveToMyKeyboard/gifts).



> Originally inspired by a cute headcanon SaS provided about trolls purring to comfort themselves. 
> 
> (Many thanks also to inkyopolis and rawrimamidget for the edits! :)

So okay, you suppose you’ll admit it: “taking a walk” is not the shittiest idea you’ve ever had. When you’re finally, gruesomely killed and all your bad decisions flash mockingly before your lookstubs, that honor will go to “fucking up your brand new universe”, “fucking up your old universe”, and “getting yourself killed in the first place”. This ectolab cum musclebeast mausoleum isn’t exactly scenic, but you suppose it’s better than being stuck in the control room. Not even an actually competent friendleader could spend another hour cooped up with your stupid friends. 

Trolls simply weren’t meant to get along for extended periods, at least, not with a socially acceptable amount of culling. Gamzee keeps finding (or alchemizing) more shitty horns and rolling on them right in the middle of the control room. Terezi claims she’s handling her human but all she does is lick at his timeline and cackle. The trash lying around has built to critical levels because nobody has a scavenger lusus, everybody keeps wandering away when you talk at them, and the whole room generally reeks of hormones and stupidity. If you have to listen to Feferi coo over Sollux’s obnoxious giggle-snort one more time, you’re going to chuck them both horns-first into the void.

That is, if you don’t get your whole team murdered by the demon first!  

It’s so great to be in charge.

You decide to take the path toward the ectobiology lab - not that you have any fondness for the place, but at least it has four alchemiters. Maybe you can synthesize some non-shitty coffee. 

You immediately spend the next twenty minutes lost. You’d swear this place was designed by a carpenter drone someone locked in a basement; every other turn leads to yet another superfluous corridor of disillusionment. 

As a result, you aren’t paying close attention when you finally find a transportalizer. It says “lab”, you’re pissed off. You punch the button and there’s a flash. 

And then...nothing.

The lights aren’t on in whatever section of the lab you’ve landed in, not even the creepy floodlights you’re used to seeing on the behemoth tanks. The darkness takes on an eerie quality almost immediately, cavernous and damp, like a rogue lusus’s breath. You can barely see your prongs in front your face. 

The only luminance is the hateful glow of the auxiliary LEDs, highlighting an obnoxious path to the nearest ‘EXIT’. Which for you probably means the frigid, unfeeling void of space. You don’t have Vriska’s fancy wiggler dressup suit, so you can’t jump out airlocks willy-nilly. The best you can do is grope for the light switch.

You get all of two steps off the platform when you feel it: the creeping sense that you’re not alone. Something  _ slumps _ away from the wall, a moving shadow where no shadow should be, and your sickles are in your prongs before you can say “fuck my life”. 

If you bolt for the transportalizer, will you have time to beam out before it gets its claws in you?

If it’s the demon, is it going to follow you right back to your friends?

Stupid. Stupid. So incredibly fucking stupid. You should have known better than to think something could go right for you. You, the sorry mutant hatched to be a fuck up. Maybe it’s fitting that you’ll be the first to go. At least you lived long enough to understand why the universe hates you.

You hoist your sickles into the ready position, not that it’ll likely matter. If it’s the demon coming to call, the best you can hope for is a few good hits before he tears you apart like gaper-paper. Your pusher is doing triple time in your chest and your breath sounds like a hurricane through your auricular clots. 

The nameless lump lurches again and a faint noise sputters from its direction. A wet sound, somewhere between a cough and a purr. 

An unmistakably  _ trollish _ noise.

You rub your ganderbulbs hard and squint at the shape. Now that it’s closer, you think you can pick out the impression of tall horns. 

Relief pours down the backs of your strut pods like water, flash-boiling immediately on contact with your righteous fury. 

“Are you fucking kidding me? Gamzee!?  If you’re high down here, I am going to lose my  _ shit _ !”

Fuck, you hate how squeaky your voice sounds. Not exactly hatched-leader material. On the other prong, you’re too furious to care. You decaptcha your sickles so you don’t risk nicking yourself with your shaking nubs. 

“Turn on the lights you sopor-infused suppository!  I could have fucking culled you. Did you forget the part where we’re hiding from a deranged murder-Jack with a penchant for dramatic entrances and a questionable interest in chew toys?”

The hiccough-purr sputters again, evening out into a strange, raspy rumble. You’ve never heard Gamzee purr like this before -- if that’s Gamzee, if he’s alone. Oh gog, did you walk in on a moirallegiance?  Are the lights off for a fucking reason? It would be your putrid luck. 

“Equius?  Nepeta??  Hopy shiz, get a block. I  _ order _ you to get a block. I order you not to get off on that order. Damn it.”

The troll-shaped blob shifts, stretches higher against the wall. A long tail of darkness wafts out behind it with a fabric-y whoosh. You suddenly have the nasty feeling you know exactly who that is. 

“For fuck’s sake, Kar,” an infuriatingly familiar, infuriatingly whiny voice croaks. “It’s me. Can w-we stop w-with the w-wiggler guessin’ games, some ‘a us hawe a headache.”

Of course. Of course it’s The Fucking Fish because this universe hates you and nothing is easy. Normally you can deal with Eridan’s stupid problems, but right now, you are at the living  _ end _ . You can’t even pretend not to growl at him. 

“Oh no, you have a headache,” you snap. “Meanwhile, I’m having eleven simultaneous pusher attacks. One for each of you rumpus factory rejects. It’s a mediculler mystery how I’m still alive!”

Eridan’s purr isn’t letting up. The rumble is building louder with every breath, both inhale and exhale. Something about it sets your blunt fangs on edge. It’s too rough, too wet. Like Kanaya’s lipstick gummed up with blood. 

“Get a fucking block if you want to pap yourself,” you snarl at him. “And turn on the fucking lights.”

You stalk to the wall and claw at it until you find a light switch. You toggle it up with extreme prejudice.

And gasp.

Eridan is a fucking  _ mess _ . He leans against the wall like it’s the only thing keeping him vertical. One of his horns is scraping against a bolt and the left side of his face is one ugly, continuous bruise. He blinks at you like his big eyes can’t focus; the nictitating membrane is half covering the left one.

You have no idea where his glasses are. You have the nasty feeling the violet cuts across his cheeks are where they used to be. 

“Eridan, what the fuck!?”

Eridan hisses and recoils like a daywalker presented with allium vegetables. He ducks his face into the collar of that ridiculous FLARP cape he refuses to stop wearing. 

“ _ Kar _ , w-what the fuck?” he warbles back. “I said I had a fuckin’ headache!”

Is he even serious with this!?  You stalk closer, unsure if the twisting in your digestive sack is pity or anger. You get that a lot with Eridan.

“You mean you got your pan bashed in!  You probably have a goddamn concussion. Lemme see your pupils.”

Eridan squinches his eyes tighter and hisses again, flicking his fins into a forward threat display. The effect is ruined by the way the left one can’t seem to hold open completely, and the pitiful rattle in his chest. 

Because that’s a comfort-purr, you can place it now. The ragged, unsettling rumble of a troll desperate enough to advertise their pain. Or too sick to care who hears them papping theirself. If he had a moirail, they would be tearing down the world to get to him and treat his injuries -- but Eridan doesn’t anymore. 

That’s the entire fucking problem. 

“Come on man, we talked about this,” you sigh. “Stop fucking dueling Sollux. Unless you enjoy flinging yourself hornsfirst into a wall until the heat death of the universe? Scratch that, maybe you do, you masochistic moron.  _ He _ doesn’t. Get it through your pan.”

Eridan growls and swipes blindly at the wall, making an ugly sound with his claws. You spring back like a hopbeast on steroids. Better safe than accidentally scratched.

“Oh nice, so it’s my fault?” Eridan complains. “W-way to blame the fuckin’ vvictim.”

You snort.

“Victim, my oversized ass!  What’d you do, trip him on the stairs?  Or did you jump him in the loadgaper again?  He. Is. A. Psionic. He could literally melt you with his pan. You’re lucky he doesn’t twist you like a knotted cracker-snack.” 

Eridan isn’t saying (or whining) anything in his defense, just hiding his nose and purring. It’s all the confirmation you need. You drag a palm down over your face. Some days you’re just...tired. So, so tired.

“You can’t force a kismesitude, okay?  You have to have that good, solid foundation of hate.”

Eridan peeks his good eye open. His sneer is even uglier with a swollen lip. 

“I hate him enough for the both ‘a us.”

“That doesn’t even make sense.” 

“W-well he definitely ain’t gonna come around if I just givve up!”

You rub at your ganderbulbs, trying to stave off your own inevitable headache. You already know there’s no sense arguing. You’ve been down this inane frolic-path before. Eridan knows damn well that  _ Sollux _ knows exactly what he’s up to. Of course Sollux isn’t going to capitulate and dive into sweet, sweet hate because some taintchafer wants his matesprit ashen. It’s fucking insulting for someone to only hate you for your other quads. 

“Will you just show me your stupid eyes!?” You demand instead. “I am not having you die down here where I have to deal with it!”

“Fuck no!” Eridan says, but there’s no strength behind the words. His thorax is visibly vibrating with stress. Whatever he says, his purrbox gives him away. 

You cautiously circle closer and hold up a prong to shield his face. Eridan peeks open one eye, then the other, into the welcoming shade. He yelps and flinches but his pupils do shrink in tandem when you move your hand and hit him with light.

“Kar!”

“Congrats, your ganderbulbs are still operational.”

Does that mean he’s okay then? You’re no mediculler. Kanaya’s the closest to having any training, but she’s even more fed up with Eridan’s hoofbeastshit. Balance, maybe. That’s a pan injury thing. 

“Uh, try walking a straight line?”

Eridan grumbles and squints at you. This close, you can see the sunken bags where his glasses should be. You wonder if he’s ever considered  _ not _ glaring his way through life.

“I ain’t on sopor!”

“No, you’re high on all-natural stupidity,” you agree. “Just do it.”

He takes all of two steps heel-to-toe before stumbling back to the wall. The wet noise burbles again in his chest, choking his purr into a vicious fit of hiccoughs.

“This is beastshit, I can’t see where I’m goin’,” Eridan whines. 

“You’re going to ‘coon is where you’re going,” you tell him. “C’mon. I’ve still got medislime.” 

Eridan goes very stiff, trembling against the wall. You casually take a step back (or ten). 

“I ain’t gonna w-waste good slime,” Eridan says, pointedly nonchalant. “Fef can heal me.”

Oh. Oh mothergrub-shitting nubslurping hell to the  _ no _ . 

“Are you shitting me!?” 

The wiggler-squeak is back in your voice and you don’t even care. 

“Are you shitting me right now?  Did you just open your fetid, gaping waste tunnel and speak directly from your sphincter?  Because I didn’t think even you were this stupid.”

Eridan shows you an unpleasant, violet-stained row of teeth.

“She’s a healer. It makes sense. Conservvin’ consumable resources.”

You wonder if it’s possible to feel so much simultaneous anger and pity that you get whiplash for vacillating so fast. For someone who’s not even  _ in _ one of your quadrants.

“Eridan,” you say, pinching at your brow. “Let me break it down. For the four thousandth time, with small words and detailed diagrams, because apparently it didn’t percolate the other three thousand nine-hundred and ninety-nine. _Feferi is not going to flip ashen_. It doesn’t matter how pathetic you look. No troll with the sense the mothergrub gave a cross-eyed no-horn wiggler is gonna auspistice this shit. You and Sollux aren’t an even matched. She’s _never_ going to want you together.” 

_ She’s never going to want  _ **_you_ ** , you want to come out and shriek but -- you can’t. You just can’t. Not even you are that much of an asshole.

Eridan’s fins twitch in a complicated, bizarre ripple. You can’t tell if that’s supposed to be a specific insult, or if he’s generically being a bulgebiter.

“...I know-w,” he admits. “Don’t mean she w-won’t think I match w-with somebody.”

You resist the urge to smash your own face into a wall.

“Do you actually listen to yourself when you talk?  Or do you just like flapping your lips?  You think Feferi is going to look at your psychopathic ass, think ‘oh no, this poor troll who keeps attacking my matesprit!’ and commit to being your fated auspistice?” 

“Maybe!” Eridan snarls. “She fuckin’ ow-wes me!”

“Oh my god!”

You throw your hands up. Forget the demon-Jack. This is how you are going to end, in a squalid ectolab with an unbalanced highblood, because you are so sick of trolls  _ not listening _ . 

“Okay, there are so many things wrong with that I don’t know where to begin but --”

You jab a furious finger at Eridan’s vibrating thorax. 

“First thing?  You’re not getting any hate while you’re dripping  _ pale _ , you maladapted goldfish.  _ Listen _ to yourself. You might as well be flouncing around in a snuggleplane and hopbeast slippers, begging any floozy to drag you to a sleepover!”

Eridan’s chest hitches and you can visibly see him struggling to control his purrbox. Failing. He starts to gasp with each subsequent breath, chirping in alarm when he can’t just will his body to behave. 

“You’re making it worse!” you squawk. 

Fuck, he looks so scared. Maybe you shouldn’t have called attention to it?  Does he...does he not know about self-soothing instincts? 

“Your purrbox is trying to calm you down,” you tell him. “The harder you fight it the more it’s going to happen. You need medislime, okay?”  

And rest, and an attitude adjustment, and five thousand other things. Jegus, you thought you were a stubborn lump of flesh. You wonder, not for the first time, what the fuck is actually broken in him. If it’s even something you could fix.

Eridan shakes his head so hard you think you see a horn tip chip off against the wall. He doesn’t even react beyond a brief, pained keen. You’re starting to feel vaguely ill.

“Fef can stop it,” he insists through another spate of purring. His face contorts and he slams a fist right into his purrbox. And again, and again, until he’s  _ wheezing _ . Holy shit.

“She has to,” Eridan continues. “It’s her fuckin’ fault. She fuckin’ -- it’s like w-we w-were  _ nothin _ ’! Like I nevver mattered at all!” 

“Eridan,” you warn. This rapidly getting out of hand and you’re not convinced you’re not making it worse, but goddamn it. You’re not going to dump this mess on Feferi and Sollux now, they don’t deserve this. No one does.

Eridan’s eyes snap to yours, wide and unseeing, and you get the sense it’s not the lack of glasses that has him staring through you. 

“Eridan,” you say, more gently this time. You’re not exactly a master of tact but even you can see that you’re standing on a precipice. “I’m sorry, okay?  But it’s over. The whole fucking world is. And I’m  _ sorry _ .”

Eridan jerks and bends nearly double, inhaling in triple-time, staccato breaths that can’t be yielding enough air. His fins are twitching all over the place. You have seen a lot of sea dweller movies but you can’t parse this as anything but spasms.

“It’s his fault,” Eridan pants. “This w-whole fuckin’ game. H-he made it an’ the w-world  _ ended _ an’ he’s the fuckin’ ‘hero’!?”

He shoves himself away from the wall like it’s shocked him and careens toward the transportalizer. His legs hardly seem like they’re attached to the same body. They skitter drunkenly half a beat behind him, like his limbs are trying to catch up to his mouth.  

“She hated that shit. Didn’t want me to do it! I coulda done it, any night ‘a the week. An’ I didn’t.”   

“I have no idea what you’re talking about!”

Eridan steps on the edge of his own cape and stumbles. When he realizes what’s holding him back, he claws at it and screeches.

It’s like there’s a pan-control parasite inside him. It’s like you’re watching a bad daywalker film and you can’t put the holo on pause. You’ve read about highblood rage, in thrilling confrontations with rebel forces and eloquent displays tempered by plucky lowbloods. It was always exciting, a fascinating moment of narrative tension. Not...depressing. Not like this. 

Your digestive sac is flipping in nauseous loops and you skirt wide to get in front of him. 

If he goes to the control room like this, he’s going to kill somebody. Or get himself killed. 

“Eridan,  _ stop _ !”

“Bite a puffer,” Eridan howls back. His eyes are almost entirely dilated, twin voids of hate. The tiny photopheres on his fins are glowing bright enough to be visible despite the overhead lights. Little wisps of white curl around his fists and your bowels are turning to water. 

Oh Jegus. Oh fuck. This is how you’re going to end, isn’t it?  At the end of a wand or a gun or a creeping noose of hope, because you had the audacity to think you could do anything. Eridan is melting down and everything you’ve done has only made it worse, and those tendrils of not-magic look like they’re ready to pull down all that exists.

There’s only one thing left to do. 

You dart forward and clap a shaking hand to the unblemished side of his face.

Eridan startles and makes a guttural noise, like he’s not sure what to make of the fingers against his skin. You take the attack of opportunity and curl them beneath his jaw, searching for the slight depressions of his pale glands. As if by accident, your first finger slots directly into one slightly rough pit and he keens like a barkbeast broken in the street.

“Shoosh,” you pray desperately, pressing on his sweet spot. “Shoosh shoosh. Please don’t kill me.  _ Shoosh _ .”

For a long, pusher-stopping moment, you hear  _ everything _ . Eridan’s white-science sizzling in the air. Your own traitor blood whooshing through your veins. You just keep rubbing the space between his jawbone and fin and will yourself not to pass out.

“I got you,” you tell him. Like the adventures of Lativa and Rezzik, or the legend of the Palatial Pacifier. If you say it with enough conviction, maybe it’ll be true.

Eridan shudders and he makes a noise like a deflating helium bladder. His ganderbulbs squeeze shut and he starts to tremble into your hand. His purr is so thick he can’t seem to form words.

“I got you,” you tell him again, and hesitantly brush the backs of your fingers over his fin. 

Eridan croons and looks up at you, dazed. Like he’s seeing you, really seeing you for the first time. You stroke him again along a delicate tine and watch as his jaw goes slack and his eyes soften. He brushes rough lips over the inside of your wrist. 

Then he bursts into tears.

“Shit!” you squawk, completely unprepared for waterworks. You’re not sure what you did wrong. Or right?  Eridan gets emotional sometimes, you know that well enough. He’s gnawed chewholes straight through his scarf when you’ve had difficult conversations. But you’ve never seen him just -- dissolve. 

“It’s so fucked, Kar. Evverythin’ is so, so fucked.”

“I know,” you say helplessly, doubling back to his pale points. You can’t tell if it’s doing much good. This is nothing like you thought your first time would be - alone in a dank lab with a panicked, shaky sea dweller. You don’t feel plucky and powerful and strong. 

All you want is for him to stop purring like that, like that pitiful motor is the only thing that keeps him going. 

“She’s the only thing I had. An’ she threw-w me out because I’m  _ trash _ . Ovveremotional, dramatic, fuckin’ useless trash. I knew-w it. Vvris knew-w it. Fef’s the only one--”

Eridan rakes at his face like he’s trying to claw the tears out. You have to grab his wrist before he scratches you too. 

“Hey!” you squeak. 

“It’s true!” Eridan insists. “She acted all nice like -- like I w-w-w-wasn’t a burden w-when it’s clear as shit I am!  She didn’t evven w-wanna be my moirail!  She asked ‘cause she thought I’m  _ incompetent _ !” 

His fins droop and he lists violently to one side, maybe less physically disoriented as emotionally. You squeeze on his wrist to steady him.

“Stop. Just stop it, okay?  You want to get into ‘piece of shit’ Olympics, I guarantee I can give you a run for your money. I’m the defending gold-medal winner for ‘destroying all hopes and dreams’.”

“You didn’t let the Glub go off,” Eridan sniffles. “I w-was in the game first. I w-was messin’ around w-with Nepeta’s ablution block or somethin’, I don’t remember. And the fuckin’ Glub w-went off. I didn’t evven know-w it but it w-went an’ killed fuckin’ evverythin’, an’ then she thinks the pissblood is so great…”

You squeeze his wrist bones together a little tighter.

“Sollux died getting her in,” you remind him. You’re not here for this constant everything-is-Sollux’s fault routine. “Classic fated sacrifice. You can’t compete with that, finface.”

“I KNOW-W!” Eridan howls. “Because I w-wasn’t there!?  Or maybe a meteor got her. W-who cares. After the Glub, it didn’t matter. W-we’re all dead trolls w-walkin’. An’ Fef couldn’t w-wait to get rid a me.”

His sobs are intermingled with wet bouts of purring, just as desperate and horrible as before. His cheeks are raw with tear salt and blood. 

“Only tw-welvve ‘a us left in the entire univverse an’ she saw-w it as her  _ chance _ ,” he whispers. “How-w shit do you figure I hafta be?”

You don’t know what you’re supposed to say to that. If there’s anything anyone could say. Maybe you could be the best pale actor in the fleet and this would still just have to hurt.

“Shoosh,” you tell him. It tastes like gravel in your mouth.

Eridan’s fins collapse into limp wedges. His photophores have dimmed nearly to nothing. Just regular old moon-spots on his skin. 

He rubs his moist cheek against the palm of your hand. When he kisses your pulse point this time, it’s as gentle as death. 

“She’s not comin’ back, is she.”

“...no.”

He hangs his head, purring and purring and purring. 

After a moment, you pull him close.

Eridan presses his face into your shoulder, mashing blood and tears into the softness of your sweater.

“It doesn’t feel like there’s a point to anythin’ anymore,” he says.

“I know,” you admit. 

His purr thrums into your chest, slightly muted now with your arms around him. You rub your hands up and down his back. You touch the softness of his nape. 

In stories and books, maybe this would be a grand revelation. Your soothing talents immortalized in song. Here and now, it’s just you and him, and the two of you are very small. 

He cries, and you hold him.

Maybe that can be enough.


End file.
